Alll In the Golden Afternoon: Alternative
by s2lou
Summary: Somehow an alternative ending for Two faces..., which still isn't finished, but it'll come. A piece of ansgt and fluff, because I like it. There! Fuller explaination inside, I'm afraid this isn't very explicit.


**Author's note: The idea of this came up while I was working on the last-born chapter of My 'Two faces of an angel' story. I was thinking over this picture of Kaito, sitting all alone in the sunset – and I thought, why not make Aoko come up? but I dismissed it 'cause I already had the Hakuba dialogue and if I followed that lead it would inevitably end up in a lot of fluff and a totally different ending than the one I've already thought out (it's written up, yes. I still have to work on whatever will happen in the interim, but the End of the Tunnel is clear.) So I just shoved it aside and went on working on my 'Watching Her' shot.**

**The problem was, it was of those ideas. One of Those. You know the ones I mean. The kind of one which strolls about in your mind, makes its hole somewhere warm, and when after forty-eight hours you think you've gotten rid of it you discover it's turned into an actual fanfic shot, with a real plot and everything serious (er, sort of…), and no reason at all why you shouldn't write it out.**

**I did write it out. With the Fanfictionnal Kaito/Aoko Muse (Lord, that one's powerful) perched on my bedside lamp and shouting sentences and metaphors in my ear all night, it had become rather difficult not to do so.**

**So here it goes. God, what an A/N! Consider this as an alternative ending to 'Two faces of an angel'. Characters, situations all the same (an if you don't know them, it'd be nice to go and check out.)**

**As for that disclaimer thing… geez, what's the point in telling you what you already know? We're allll in the same boat.**

**-**

All In the Golden Afternoon – Alternative

-

_All in the golden afternoon_

_Full leisurely we glide_

_For both our oars, with little skill,_

_By little arms are plied,_

_While little hands make vain pretence_

_Our wanderings to guide._

Alive in Wonderland

_Long has paled that sunny sky_

_Echoes face and memories die_

_Autumn frosts have slain July._

Through the Looking-Glass

Lewis Caroll

-

The sun was definitely sinking in a sea-sky of golden and white. It had now reached the clock tower's spire, and standing on it like a copper-coloured orb on top of a dark thin spike, which pierced through it and let it escape a flood of gold and light flowing over a paramount of clouds. No sound at all came to break this sight but the soft, irregular creaking of the swing Kaito was sitting on, as if Tokyo itself kept a religious silence for the day about to die in the endlessness of the night. (A/N: no, I'm not drunk, thank you.)

Higher and higher he swung, pulling on his feet when they racked against the gravel, and then stretching his long legs to rise higher still, towards the dark-purple and dark-red clouds. His eyes as well were gliding up and down the tall, lean figure of the clock tower, black as a shadow against a brilliant light. Below, the cobbles of the square were either grey already or shimmering with dusk's falling glow. His feet hit the ground and propelled him father.

Bells began to ring; a slow, grave chime of bronze, ticking past hours, days, years, back to a time when bright blue eyes spoke only of innocence and mischievous grins were but the shadow of what they were now…

"_What are you doing here? Are you waiting for someone?"_

"_My dad…" _a little girl's clear voice chirped in response to the little boy's curious question. _"He said he'd come play with me, but he's busy and I think he won't come…" _She sounded disappointed and put-upon but not really surprise, as though this kind of situation was average.

A short pause, then a rose was produced, blooming from the boy's alert fingers. "_Here,"_ he said, handing it over and beaming. "_My name is Kuroba Kaito. Nice to meet you."_

"My name is Kuroba Kaito. Nice to meet you," he murmured. Then he realized that he was twenty-two, and that the bells had stopped. He looked up at the clock again, beyond which the sun was but a scarlet corolla, bathing the building with red light. It was exactly the same as it had been five years ago, as grand and impressive as fifteen years ago. It had ticked by the lapse of time, unchanging, indifferent to years, unknowing that the two children who had met once under its over-hanging shape were now fully grown, and had met, collided with, friendship, love, hate.

For the first time in years, Kaito really wanted to cry.

-

Aoko attained the top of the hill facing the clock tower at the very moment the sun was right behind the bell-tower, and shone straight against the grass of the small park. The square below was already drowned in grey but from where she stood she was almost blinded by the heavy amount of light. She held up a hand to protect her eyes, assaulted by the usual memories the place always brought up from the past.

How long exactly she stood, watching the sunset, was impossible to be sure. It felt like an eternity to her, but the sun had hardly sunk two inches lower in the sky when she started down the gold-and-green grass, with half a mind to sit on one of the empty swings and let her past seven-years-old her take back control, if only for a few minutes – until, at least, the sun had set. She had almost reached them when she noticed someone was sleeping at their feet.

The police officer in her genes immediately woke up. "Please, sir," she said in her most rigorous voice, "you mustn't sleep he… re."

She drew in a deep breath and sat down in the grass.

How strange it was to watch him in all the peacefulness and vulnerability of sleep, when she was so much used to collapse with his cocky grins and the sparkle of mischief in the blue behind the monocle. All the slyness of the gentleman thief was gone; there was only innocence in the childishness of his sleeping features… except to her, who knew what lay beneath that mask.

Deceptions.

Disclaimers.

All the way through.

It was weird sitting here and watching sleep, with no more than the mild want to handcuff him to the swing, reminded of all those times they had played together in this park, laughing and unsuspecting, remembering… remembering…

-

The bells rang again, once, and resounded far in Kaito's dream, striking him awake. For a moment he wondered about, having no idea what he was doing in the grass – he had fallen asleep… he'd been thinking about Aoko and he'd fallen asleep. _Silly of me, _he thought, and looked up at the time.

His eyes broke in mid-travel, as they met Aoko's. She was sitting barely two yards from him, and this close sight of her made his heart leap–

"Ao–! Nakamori-san."

Aoko heard the rapid change of direction in his voice, saw Poker Face fall down like a mask, sweeping surprise from his features, curing his lips in a mid-contemptuous, mid-sarcastic snarl, leaving nothing behind of what had been there a moment ago. In half a second, he'd switched from the lazy young man back in high school classes to the sly, ironical gentleman thief she met about one night per week. no need for a top hat or a white cloak; Kaito Kid was sitting right there in front of her.

So strong was the impression, that she could almost catch a glimpse of reflected light shining through the monocle… she wondered if he could control the beating of his heart, too.

"You shouldn't sleep here," she said in an even, toneless voice. "It'll get cold when the night comes down." She encircled her knees with her arms and rested her chin on them, waiting for the icy reply that would undoubtedly come strolling by. It didn't.

A few minutes were spent and she didn't look at him. She didn't feel him move, so far as she knew he was watching, like her, towards the sunset and the clock tower. The sun was slightly off-centre to the south; they could see its right half, streaming with gold. Gold was everywhere now – onto the clouds, the sky, the town – and the stoop grass hill where they were both sitting, blinding them with its brightness, surrounding them with its glimmers. Behind them, however, the horizon was darkening slowly, and as the sun dipped towards the buildings they cold began to come down.

Only when Kaito's jacket landed on her shoulders did Aoko realize she had been shivering. She felt it fall against her back and arms, like a wave of lukewarm water, and the warmth resulted for it was so unexpected she involuntarily looked up at Kaito, whose attention was already restored to the sunset.

"I'm not cold," she lied.

"Course not," he said, not looking at her.

They feel again in the deepest silence. After a while, Aoko tightened the jacket around her shoulders.

Clouds, she remarked, had gathered up at the skyline, and the sun was just above them, its lower half just grazing against their white-gold-shaded shapes. Everything round had turned paler; the air itself was sharper, purer. A swift evening wind rose up, sweeping through the last autumn leaves of the park's trees – they could hear the branches rustle up and down in their back, just above the swings. One of them began to move and creak, scarily.

Maybe, actually, it was that chilling breeze and rustling leaves, but the fact is that Aoko began to hear voices. There were two of them, and she recognized them both instantly; there was no way to mistake them since their respective owners were right there at the moment.

"_Baka? I am who I am," _she'd been pouting – she recognized everything, moment, situation, location. "_It's you… it's you who're so cold… just like ice cream…" _she'd murmured, giving hers an absent lick.

He'd 'puff'-ed the ice cream out of her hand and grinned. It was a soft, mild grin – those were totally gone by now. "_Yes," _he'd said, stepping onto the edge of the fountain they were standing near to, _"but isn't ice cream sweet, too?"_

They disappeared back in the gold. Aoko had no idea whether she'd not imagined it, and made no comment. Not a word came from his side either, but after a few more minutes of silence the voices came back again, only younger, and from behind them shapes emerged – again – out of the gold…

"_Kaito," _little Aoko'd murmured, crouched by the boy's huddled up figure. _"Kaito, answer me…"_

"_Go away,"_ he'd said, in a voice deformed by his bitten back sobs. His face had been carefully hidden, but it'd been obvious he was doing his best trying not to cry. "_Just. Go. Away."_

Aoko'd looked hurt, but determined. "_I certainly won't!" _she'd exclaimed, and though she was only ten there had definitely been something in her voice and air that evoked the hot-tempered teenage she was about to become. "_I won't let you here all alone, Kaito! I won't!" _She'd flung her arms around his neck and hugged him as close as she could.

This time Kaito's face had been visible from above her shoulder. In the half-second that followed his embracing him, that distorted, childish face had crumpled from determination to total loss, and great, large tears had begun to run down his cheeks. He hadn't tried, this time, to hide them, he hugged Aoko back and went on crying.

And they faded out – again – back into the gold. It was a different sort of gold now – darker, less bright than before. And from it new figures strolled by, figures of what they had been – primary school, middle school, high school – alternatively. Quarrels, hugs, mop-chases, denials, dates, sandbox plays, Kid heists. they all passed by and disappeared, in the last golden flickers of the afternoon.

When the last of them had finally vanished in thin air, leaving lingering echoes of voices, and Kaito looked shyly at Aoko – wondering whether and how she would react – he saw a long, single tear roll down her cheek, in spite of her angry eyes glaring at nothing in particular.

He immediately panicked. In all their confrontations, Aoko had been careful to present a strong side, to respond with anger and impassivity to his clown-like mockeries. She never acknowledged any weak flank – never to him. She wouldn't have cried in front of Kid, because it would have meant admitting him for her former best friend, and she'd made it plain she no longer considered him as such.

"Aoko…" But it was difficult to keep as Nakamori-keibu and Kaito Kid when their past itself slammed them in the face and pushed them to the brink. It was like – so he pondered – acting as tightrope walkers, swaying to and fro, and waving frantically not to fall. And himself – the unmatchable thief, never-slipping magician – was finding it more and more painful to keep the mask on, faced with her. This was the old Aoko, the innocent, seventeen-years-old one, who didn't have to assume a role, didn't have to pretend she was strong enough.

"Aoko… I…" He cautiously slid a prudent arm around her shoulders, expecting her to shove him away and glare furiously. She did shiver, but didn't stir; and, encouraged, he pulled her a little against his chest. The fact that she let him was agreeably surprising, but he hadn't really hoped she would slid her arms around his chest and allow him to lean his cheeks against her hair – he could hear sobs which she repressed in the crook of his shoulder.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, in the wildness of her hair. "I'm so sorry."

"You bet," she said, her voice muffled but nevertheless firm. Then she looked up at him, and their respective cheeks burned with the same shame of two high school students; however curious this may seem, they hadn't actually realized they were so… close. It looked so easy, now, so easy to bend down and steal a kiss, and yet everything that was bound to separate them, his being Kid, the death of her father, seemed to revolve around them, like golden leaves brushed away by the wind, murmuring that was all hopeless, and there was no gain to be got in thus changing the situation…

As soon as their lips met, Kaito knew he'd made a mistake.

Because the kiss was rapidly rocketed to such a degree of intensity like only months of longing could be the cause of – and there was no way to stop. He who'd always controlled every one of his heists to the smallest detail, ascertained that he could completely direct the showing-off of his feelings, was now overwhelmed by the sentiments and needs he had been trying to hide. It was probably a dream, just another one of those dreams, and Aoko, Aoko, Aoko… Aoko did _not_ arrange the situation… why did her lips have to be so tender, why did they have to be kissing back – why did _she_ have to be kissing back? She probably had no idea how the simple way her lips twisted under his affected every limit he'd ever succeeded in imposing to himself – how, so quickly, so easily, she could tear down all the barriers it'd taken him years to build up.

Yet he lowered her to the grass, expecting her every second to give a cry of horror and push him away – instead she pulled him down to her, and lips one second parted met again, warm, demanding, hungry for more. Kaito Kid and Nakamori-keibu were long forgotten; they were back to high school students, only without the complexes and shyness which back then curbed their impulses towards each other. And every gesture – Aoko's hands in his hair, Kaito's fingers tracing down her arms – stirred in their bodies more and more emotions and needs, kisses growing deeper and deeper, caresses getting more and more intimate – they were caught in a spiral, and, dizzying so, hurling in precipitate spinning from all the appearances, however sincere, they had been holding up until a few moments ago, into needs they had been trying to ignore, into desires they didn't know they had.

"Kaito…" she murmured, a mere breath escaping her lips before he claimed them again; and it had been so long since that name hadn't been pronounced between the two of them, so long since Kuroba Kaito and Kaito Kid hadn't been two different people, that it almost seemed this lasting interval had been nothing more than a dream – or else this was it. "Kaito…" and she stopped cold.

She stopped moving entirely – her hands, which had been fumbling in his hair, falling lifelessly onto the grass – and her eyes stared up at him with the same sting of disbelieving horror that there had been in their deep blue on the night she'd first seen him with the mask on. Kaito knew immediately what had happened – he'd been watching out for it ever since their lips had touched.

"Oh. My. _God,"_ she mouthed between her fingers, and with a growl he rolled away from on top of her onto the grass. Lying on his back, he glared angrily at the blood-tainted clouds and cursed himself for being so stupid.

Beside him, Aoko hesitantly sat up and put her arms around her knees again, resting her forehead upon them. Kaito watched her shoulders, whose imperceptible quiver demonstrated enough that she knew, as well as he, that the tightrope had been slashed in two. The steady, equilibrate relationship they had come to entertain, as a police officer on one side, as a thief on the other, had very brutally committed suicide – that was plain enough. There was no way, now, they could come back to their usual confrontations, without the memory of that kiss breaking in and rising between them. The situation had switched to another, again, just as they were beginning to get used to it.

There more Kaito thought this, the more he saw only one way to get out of it. It would be radical; but, after all, he'd burnt his boats – they both had.

"Aoko… I…" Lord, he was making a mess of things. It was laughable, really, how he could control his looks and speeches both in common life and on the stage of his heists, that was kid's play to him; and yet how handling with Aoko and with the feelings she awoke inside him, belonged neither to normal reality nor to the illusions he created – but something in between. "I… know it's probably a lost cause from the start, and I've no idea when this can be, but… when this Kid business is over, will you marry me?"

Aoko's eyes which were wide enough already enlarged still as she turned to him. "_Marry _you?" she repeated, and at the definite stress on the first word Kaito immediately understood that the cause was, indeed, lost from the start, that it was only primary instinct which had pulled her into kissing him back, and that she had never, ever considered things as such… he turned away.

"It's okay," he said, scrambling awkwardly to his feet. "I won't torment you with this – you don't have to worry that–"

This is when Aoko launched herself at him, slamming him back to the ground.

The next few minutes were somewhat confused. A few wholeheartedly repeated, "YES! YES! YES!" and half a dozen more kisses were necessary to convince him that, yes, she did want to marry him – most enthusiastically. And when at last realization dawned, a good ten minutes were devoted to the direct verification of this – an excessive consummation of kisses. When they re-emerged, it was reluctantly and thinking only of being back at it again.

"Are you sure?" Kaito asked worriedly. "I don't want you to make any promises you might regret afterwards…"

She laughed; a fresher, more mirthful laugh than he'd ever heard in her mouth during the past last months. "I'm probably one of the lamest police officers ever," she acknowledged (this thought didn't appear to affect her at all), "to be falling in love with my worst enemy – but I was in love with you much before I knew you were Kid. Since high school, I think," she added thoughtfully. Her voice suddenly dropped a tone, as she looked up at him with graver, more serious eyes. "You'll have a lot to explain, Kaito."

He grinned tenderly at her, tracing her cheekbone with a dreamy finger. "I know." There was no way he could explain with words how much he felt that she should accept to love him even without knowing the whole truth yet, that after so many weeks and months spent in chasing and escaping one another, they should finally find such a simple way to end it all, with the end of an afternoon.

"Still," she added, with one of her kiss-appealing smiles – she definitely did _not_ look like a police officer at the moment, "I told you I would catch you one day." Her hands began fumbling with his, intertwining their fingers.

"Yeah," he admitted. He couldn't help smiling – somehow he couldn't yet believe that all had been – almost – solved out, that those months of hate and disgust were now reduced to dust. "Though I never thought you'd meant it that way."

"Neither did I," she whispered, her lips a breath away from his – that definitely deserved a kiss. When they parted again, her head was resting on his shoulder – and, with a characteristic _clunk_, she'd handcuffed him to her.

"_Aoko…"_

She grinned. "I _did_ catch you." She raised her hand, lifting his with it. "And now what will you do, master thief Kid?" she teased, mockery on the edge of her lips, defying him for yet another kiss. Kaito began to laugh.

"I'll steal you," he said, and scrambled them both to their feet, scooping her up in his arms and spinning her round.

And the bells began to ring again, only this time a light-hearted and light-headed jungle, like children's laughter.

-

**Behold the fluffy ending! I can't help it. I've tried reading very serious and very grave books, treating very important problems, but they haven't cured me yet. I'm madly in love with this couple, and that's that. Try and sue me.**

**Anyhow, I hope anyone who liked the non-finished 'two faces…' enjoyed this too. Enough to review, maybe?**


End file.
